State Sanctioned Violence

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943

This “talk” was subsequently reworked to what follows. What was later discovered were two excellent books by William Cavanaugh relating to the modern state as sole authorized user of violence. Cavanaugh challenges this and so much more! My review of both books may be found here, and will be included in another series on Peace/Peacemaking, likely titled: “Justice That Yields Peace”.

Protests and resistance from those locked away in jails, prisons and detention centres occur but receive limited, if any, mainstream attention. In the United States and Canada, 61 instances of prisoner unrest occurred in 2018 alone. In August of the same year, incarcerated people in the United States planned nineteen days of peaceful protest to improve prison conditions. Complex links of institutionalized power, white supremacy and Black resistance is receiving renewed attention; however, state-condoned violence against women in carceral institutions (e.g., physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and medical neglect) is understudied. This qualitative exploratory case-study examines 10 top-tier Criminology journals from 2008-2018 for the presence of prisoner unrest/protest. Findings reveal a paucity of attention devoted to prisoner unrest or state-sanctioned violence. An argument is made that the invisibility of prisoner unrest conceals the breadth and depth of state-inflicted violence against prisoners, especially marginalized peoples. This paper concludes with a discussion of the historical legacy and contemporary invisibility of Black women's resistance against state-inflicted violence. This paper argues that in order to make sense of and tackle state-condoned violence we must turn to incarcerated people, activists, and Black and Indigenous thinkers and grassroots actors.

The death of Trayvon Martin sparked a series of responses across the U.S., including the birth of grassroots movements, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and state-sponsored initiatives such as My Brother’s Keeper (MBK). With the growing protests and concern over structural inequalities, the MBK initiative has gained significant attention and financial support. This article considers to what extent MBK misses a real opportunity to improve the lives of youth of color by recycling much of the problematic assumptions of its 1965 predecessor, the Moynihan Report. It seeks to raise key questions such as, to what extent does MBK reinforce structural inequalities by creating the conditions for an oppositional sexual politics? And in what ways does MBK serve as strategy of containment that restricts protest and ultimately societal transformation? Altogether, these concerns carry new significance in the context of continued protests against state-sanctioned violence targeting “Black lives” and “Black life.”

Protests and resistance from those locked away in jails, prisons and detention centres occur but receive limited, if any, mainstream attention. In the United States and Canada, 61 instances of prisoner unrest occurred in 2018 alone. In August of the same year, incarcerated people in the United States planned nineteen days of peaceful protest to improve prison conditions. Complex links of institutionalized power, white supremacy and Black resistance is receiving renewed attention; however, state-condoned violence against women in carceral institutions (e.g., physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and medical neglect) is understudied. This qualitative exploratory case-study examines 10 top-tier Criminology journals from 2008-2018 for the presence of prisoner unrest/protest. Findings reveal a paucity of attention devoted to prisoner unrest or state-sanctioned violence. An argument is made that the invisibility of prisoner unrest conceals the breadth and depth of state-inflicted violence against prisoners, especially marginalized peoples. This paper concludes with a discussion of the historical legacy and contemporary invisibility of Black women's resistance against state-inflicted violence. This paper argues that in order to make sense of and tackle state-condoned violence we must turn to incarcerated people, activists, and Black and Indigenous thinkers and grassroots actors.

The Spring and Autumn, which covers 722 BCE- 481 BCE, is recognized to have been an official record of the ancient Chinese state of Lǔ. The present study focuses on records of killings and assassinations, and explores the question of the original function of the Spring and Autumn records. The first part of this study focuses on the records themselves, and examines the significance of the regular form of killing and assassination records. The second part explores the records in light of narratives concerning the same events in the Zuǒ zhuàn, finding a regular pattern of discrepancies between the records and the Zuǒ zhuàn accounts that illuminates certain Spring and Autumn recording principles. Killings of noblemen were typically sanctioned responses to wrongdoing, and records of such killings indicated judgment on the victim, whereas killings of rulers and heirs apparent were crimes, and by identifying a killer, the Spring and Autumn labeled him an offender.  The third part is concerned with the practices involved in recording events such as killings, especially the proposed link between reports and records, and considers the possibility that both reports and records may have served to publicize and register judgments within Lǔ and among the ancient Chinese states. This study concludes that Spring and Autumn records of killings were not merely logs of events, and although they did not express Confucian moral judgments, they nevertheless registered judgments on the recorded events, and suggests that this early function may have been the seed of what later developed into the traditional reading of the Spring and Autumn as a work that conveyed the judgments of Confucius.

Newell Ann Van Auken, 2014, Killings and Assassinations in the Spring and Autumn as Records of Judgments. Asia Major (3d series) 27.1: 1–31.

Whitesel (2017) argues that racialized stereotypes about black bodies were used as foundations for the killing and subsequent character assassinations of Eleanor Bumpurs and Eric Garner. In response to Whitesel, I offer several points to expand on the arguments raised, as well as some critiques that should enhance future research on policing and state-sanctioned violence.

Paper presented at 'Practicing Theory - ASCA International Workshop and Conference 2011', Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 2nd-4th March 2011 https://asca.uva.nl/programme/archive-conferences/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory.html?1583659550967

Review essay of Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism eds. Holloway, J. Matamoros, F. & Tischler, S. (2009) (London: Pluto Press) in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture Vol. 8, Issue 2 http://logosjournal.com/2011/garland/